Microsoft’s official line for Windows 8 is that it has been designed to run on all hardware that is capable of running Windows 7. Thanks to thorough optimization efforts by Microsoft and the continued availability of a 32-bit version, this is largely true—Microsoft’s official system requirements for the new operating system are identical to those of Windows 7.

Those minimum system requirements only tell part of the story, though, and there’s a wide gap between a system that can run Windows 8 and a system that can run it well, particularly when it comes to Metro and Metro apps. We’ll go through all of Microsoft’s requirements one by one and tell you what you’re actually going to want to use to run Windows 8.

CPU

Microsoft says: 1 GHz or faster

Microsoft still uses clock speed to tell you what kind of processor to use with Windows, but we already know that clock speed is essentially irrelevant for comparing processors of different architectures. There are hoary old Pentium IIIs from around the turn of the millennium that run at 1GHz, but you’ll bring yourself nothing but sadness if you try using them to run a modern operating system.

For a satisfactory experience, you'll want to be using at least a dual-core processor, preferably one of Intel's Core 2 Duos, AMD's Athlon X2s, or anything newer—these processors both became common in mainstream PCs in 2006 and 2007.

Graphics

Enlarge/ Even simple games like Cut the Rope will give old graphics cards problems in Windows 8.

This basic graphics recommendation, the bare minimum required to enable the Aero Glass theme in Windows Vista and Windows 7, worked fairly well for those operating systems, and for the most part the Windows 7 user interface looks and behaves the same whether you’re using a pair of $500 graphics cards or a lowly Intel integrated graphics chip from 2006.

TechPowerUp's GPU-Z says that I've got a DirectX 10 GPU, so chances are I'm in good shape.

Windows 8 is less kind to older, low-end graphics hardware. Microsoft itself says that "some games and other software" require a DirectX 10-class graphics processor, which began shipping in late 2006 and 2007. If you have a dedicated graphics processor from ATI/AMD’s Radeon HD 2000 series or NVIDIA’s GeForce 8-series or better, you should have a reasonably good experience with Metro and Metro apps, and drivers for your card should be readily available from AMD, NVIDIA, or through Windows Update, which isn’t a given for older cards.

The conversation changes a bit when we’re talking about cheaper, integrated graphics processors, which have historically been a convenient way to cut costs and bring down power requirements in cheap PCs and laptops, but have only in recent years been powerful enough to replace even low-end dedicated GPUs. To get a decent Windows 8 experience, I would recommend using an AMD Radeon HD 3200 (2008) or better, an NVIDIA GeForce 9400 (2008) or better, or any version of Intel’s HD Graphics processor (2010), which has been included with Intel’s last three processor generations.

If you’re unsure what your graphics processor your computer uses, you can check it out either in the Windows Device Manager or by using GPU-Z, a third-party program that will give you much more detailed information about your hardware.

RAM

Microsoft says: 1GB (32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit)

Microsoft's Windows 7 RAM requirements are too low, and they continue to be too low in Windows 8. You should be using at least double the recommended amount to ensure headroom for additional programs and background services; Windows will run in the officially recommended amount of RAM, but open more than a few programs and your computer will quickly be hobbled. Memory is dirt cheap these days—treat yourself.

Hard drive

Microsoft says: 16GB (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit)

The exact capacity of the drive you use for Windows will depend entirely on what you need to store on it, so I'll refrain from making specific recommendations about it.

I do recommend using a solid-state drive to boot Windows 8, but that recommendation stands for basically any computer running any operating system ever. Windows 8 still runs fine on the spinning hard drives still shipped in most desktops and laptops, but Windows 8's tablet-esque feel and search-heavy usage model will be much better served by solid state storage—good, reliable drives from the likes of Crucial, Samsung, and Intel can be had for prices nearing about $1 per gigabyte these days, which is pretty tempting given spinning hard drives' reluctance to drop back down to pre-flood prices.

Windows 8 and Netbooks

When Windows 7 was in its public preview phase, the netbook movement was still in full swing, and Microsoft proudly proclaimed that the new OS would run much better on netbooks than Windows Vista did.

Windows 8 still runs on netbooks, but the tiny laptops’ limitations can severely impact its functionality. The Atom processor itself, especially in its dual-core variations, can run Windows 8 well enough, but the graphics processors with which Atom is so often paired— Intel's GMA 950, 3150, and 500 integrated graphics processors, for the most part—all fall well under the minimum GPU requirements we talked about above.

Even more problematic however, is the 1024x600 screen resolution used by the majority of netbooks, which is too small to run any Metro apps (the minimum is 1024x768, or 1366x768 to use Metro’s Snap feature). This by itself limits Windows 8’s usefulness on netbooks.

Conclusions

To recap, this is our complete list of recommended system requirements for a good Windows 8 experience:

This should encompass just about any desktop or laptop PC sold with a Windows 7 sticker attached, and many PCs sold during the middle and late Vista era (which is to say, from mid-to-late 2007 and on, and making the obvious exception for netbooks). You can certainly run Windows 8 on lesser hardware, and knowing the PC enthusiast community many of you probably will. However, unless you've identified some Windows 8 features that you absolutely can't live without, the Windows 8 and Metro experience on these computers won't be good enough to merit the cost of the operating system license.

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Those are good recommendations for "best" performance, not minimum. I'm running Win8 on a handful of 1GB systems, and they're actually quite responsive...way more than I expected, at least when focusing on the Metro environment. They really seem to have done a good job on making Metro resource management seamless. Firing up a bunch of desktop apps and you start feeling that 1GB of course...

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Andrew Cunningham
Andrew wrote and edited tech news and reviews at Ars Technica from 2012 to 2017, where he still occasionally freelances; he is currently a lead editor at Wirecutter. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

Those are good recommendations for "best" performance, not minimum. I'm running Win8 on a handful of 1GB systems, and they're actually quite responsive...way more than I expected, at least when focusing on the Metro environment. They really seem to have done a good job on making Metro resource management seamless. Firing up a bunch of desktop apps and you start feeling that 1GB of course...

It seems like Microsoft should try and be more explicit with the requirements they say it needs and stop with the 'xGhz processor speed' stuff. If they are honest about the requirements and aim it so you get the best experience they could combat a lot of the 'Windows is so slow' complaints that pop up purely because people are getting the best experience (and if you upgrade with lesser specs then that's up to you and isn't Microsofts fault).

A core 2 duo is still a quite capable machine, for a minimum I think that's being too conservative. It would be fine on an older Core Duo (I have tried this, for what most people use computers for it's still plenty fast), probably even an older Pentium D if you wanted (which would also make more sense since you said Athlon X2, which was closer to the D than the much newer Core 2 Duo).

I love the fact that we're having a discussion about four- and five-year old hardware that works well with a brand-new OS.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad the breakneck speed of processor improvements and constant quick obsolescence in the 90s and early 2000s is over. Remember when a new operating system made a six-month old system sluggish?

I'm typing this on a Mac Pro from 2008, and I'm perfectly happy with it. A few years ago, a four-year old machine would have been painful to use...

While Win 8 officially has the same requirements as Win 7, it runs better on low-end and old hardware, simply because of all the optimisations made for tablets. This has had the affect of lower RAM usage than 7, and just a all-round faster feel. It's actually as snappy as XP on my ancient Pentium 4 test laptop with 1GB RAM. For some tasks it's actually faster than XP (like booting).

I'd recommend installing 8 on old/slow hardware to give it a bit more life.

The minimum specs are for installing/running Windows 8...not installing/running programs. Those programs should have their own minimum specs. Your logic is wrong and you should rewrite the article to correct it.

I think they're just recommending it. Microsoft only recommends space as a minimum and not speed. Usage comes down what you need, it's hard to say "recommend 500GB of storage" when you plan on dumping your bluray collection on there.

But really, you can get a 60GB drive for next to nothing these days, which is more than enough as a boot drive and a few slower loading applications. And for performance per $, it's by far the best upgrade most people can do (adding more RAM, faster CPUs, more storage, generally has very limited returns).

Interest fact of the day, Pentium 3 architecture is roughly the same speed per mhz as Cortex A8. It's actually kind of feasible to run Windows on one, it's running applications that will kick the hell out of you (pretty much the same as all the other specs). But it's not hard to imagine tablets not particularly faster than the P3 will be running Windows 8 (just the Metro only version)

The 1024x600 displays in most netbooks will effectively mean Win8 will not run on them easily.

But a new OS from Microsoft that will not work on netbooks means a repeat of the Vista issue on netbooks where Microsoft had to supply and support WinXp for them and also means that no netbook owner will upgrade to Win8.

We know Microsoft and Intel would really rather get rid of the whole class of "netbooks". No margin in them for either company so maybe Win8 is part of the strategy.

I think they're just recommending it. Microsoft only recommends space as a minimum and not speed. Usage comes down what you need, it's hard to say "recommend 500GB of storage" when you plan on dumping your bluray collection on there.

But really, you can get a 60GB drive for next to nothing these days, which is more than enough as a boot drive and a few slower loading applications. And for performance per $, it's by far the best upgrade most people can do (adding more RAM, faster CPUs, more storage, generally has very limited returns).

Interest fact of the day, Pentium 3 architecture is roughly the same speed per mhz as Cortex A8. It's actually kind of feasible to run Windows on one, it's running applications that will kick the hell out of you (pretty much the same as all the other specs). But it's not hard to imagine tablets not particularly faster than the P3 will be running Windows 8 (just the Metro only version)

If you don't have much RAM, the hard drive speed won't determine much for performance beyond how many minutes you foolishly wait for the swap file, assuming, of course, you aren't running like a typical swapless tablet/mobile device, in which case not having enough RAM very severely limits your ability to even run your desired apps, never mind their performance. So, too, a blazing fast CPU is worthless if you have no RAM, as all computers wait at the same speed (well, more or less).

He means in comparison to getting an SSD drive. The way Windows 7-8 works with SSD drives makes having lots and lots of RAM not nearly as effective as it would be if you ran these OS on a mechanical drive. He's not saying that "it's absolutely useless", which I am assuming is how you read him.

The 2001-vintage Compaq I still use to capture video from my DVR barely runs XP without crashing. No CHANCE it'll run Windows 8.

However, since its MPEG-2 capture card would be useless in anything starting with Vista, it has to keep chugging along as-is. No worries until XP is told to commit suicide or something, which I hope Microsoft can't do...

Although I agree that the minimums are probably too low (especially the ram), I can tell you that Windows 8 runs just fine with a single core (2.8ghz) and onboard video. I didn't keep it long enough to see how it runs with a bunch of programs going as well, but in win7 I haven't had any kind of lag.

(1) why is it we want Win8? (2) the ARM version will never work well, so don't be dumb about that simple-minded Ballmer ploy. M$ finally got it pretty well to together with Win7, my guess is update is unnecessary for five years. What OS will dominate then?

I just installed Win 8 on my AMD C-50 based tablet with non-upgradable 2gb RAM and it runs much better than Win 7 did on the same hardware. Memory usage, and the associated slowdowns, have been virtually eliminated. I am running the 32-bit version at the moment because Win 8 does not have built in drivers for the accelerometer and Acer has only released a 32-bit version. 64-bit with only 2gb of RAM would probably be a bad idea anyway, though.

I'm upgrading from Consumer Preview to Release Preview, it's taking rather long so can someone just tell me if it now supports dual monitor clocks? The lack of ability to have a clock on both taskbars was one of the most annoying small details that the CP had.

The 2001-vintage Compaq I still use to capture video from my DVR barely runs XP without crashing. No CHANCE it'll run Windows 8.

However, since its MPEG-2 capture card would be useless in anything starting with Vista, it has to keep chugging along as-is. No worries until XP is told to commit suicide or something, which I hope Microsoft can't do...

You might find it worth your while to try one of the lighter Linux distros (NOT Ubuntu or similar "heavy" distro) -- if your capture card has suitable Linux drivers available.

Yikes. How does anyone actually expect this bloated mess to run well on $500 tablets (if they can even sell a proper "high-end" tablet for that price) ? At best it will run as a newer netbook.

Even tried 8? Very much doubt it, and if you say you have i wont believe you.

Win 8 is lighter than 7 and uses less RAM. Not to mention it's faster at basically everything. I've now got it running on a 8+ year old single core laptop with just 512MB. Yes 512MB!! It runs ATLEAST as good as XP on the same machine which is extremely impressive considering XP is over a decade old. With 1GB RAM + dual-core this OS is more than usable for everyday tablet or desktop tasks.

Any modern tablet will handle 8 easily, plus it's already known that x86 tablets will be dual-core with atleast 2GB. Performance is a non-issue, this is easily the best OS Micorsoft have ever produced performance wise.

(1) why is it we want Win8? (2) the ARM version will never work well, so don't be dumb about that simple-minded Ballmer ploy. M$ finally got it pretty well to together with Win7, my guess is update is unnecessary for five years. What OS will dominate then?

The fact you insist on calling Microsoft "M$" just goes to show that your "guess" is biased, and not worth the bits it is displayed with.Go troll your blind corporate hatred else where, and/or get a life.

Those are good recommendations for "best" performance, not minimum. I'm running Win8 on a handful of 1GB systems, and they're actually quite responsive...way more than I expected, at least when focusing on the Metro environment. They really seem to have done a good job on making Metro resource management seamless. Firing up a bunch of desktop apps and you start feeling that 1GB of course...

Windows 7 runs extremely well in a VM with 1 GB of RAM assigned to it on a MacBook Air. I have an SSD (which helps of course). As I use it for work, I'm generally running Visual Studio 2010, Outlook, and a few web browsers.

I definitely wouldn't say 1 GB is too little if you have an SSD backing it.

I think Microsoft has neglected to see a cool oportunity here. I know WinXP is a decade old, but in an era of growing "fragmentation" where most modern PCs are powerful enough to perform everyday tasks, there's still some market space to deliver a cool "no-frills" experience for those with older hardware, that are reluctant to cash out on newer equipment.

OS X is too fancy for that, and tied to expensive hardware. Linux is getting better, but still a bit far from normal Joe user, and Google could be making a step in the right direction with its ChromeOS (although I must admint it's a bit underpowered for most technically-inclined people)

Didn't they skip most of the bling from windows 7 and did all sorts of improvements under the hood? Shouldn't the requirements actually be lower than 7? At least Metro doesn't look to require much processing power to run smoothly but guess they didn't manage to fully metronize the OS yet...

From my own experience I can tell it runs better on machines with little RAM than windows 7 so guess that's something.

It's probably worth mentioning that 3rd party applications and services are aiming higher these days too. For example, I have a Core Duo with 2G RAM and an ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 (DX9) with Windows 7 that works great for web browsing and used to do fine with Netflix, but after recent Silverlight updates it pegs the CPU at 100% if I run on full screen. It's a similar story with Flash and Hulu or other streaming services, from searching around it looks like they've recently started targeting newer video cards so if yours doesn't support newer APIs it will offload to the CPU.